THON raises $292,877.11 in first-ever goal-based campaign

Penn State Dance Marathon (THON) announced Wednesday during its “100 Days ‘Til THON” celebrations around the HUB-Robeson Center and Old Main that is raised $292,877.11 in its first-ever goal-based campaign.

Titled “One Day We Will Dance in Celebration,” the campaign provided THON a way to personalize a traditional fundraiser.

The campaign, that began Nov. 1, a week leading up to 100 Days ‘Til THON, looked to raise $100,000 during the week-long window.

“We chose to go with a one-week campaign structure for a few reasons. First is that a goal-setting campaign is a very traditional fundraising method, we wanted to take something that is very traditional and widely-used and put our own spin on it,” said Andrew Smith, THON 2018 executive director in an email to The Underground.

“THON does not fundraise in very traditional ways, our model is very different than most other organizations. In our plans to roll-out the campaign, we wanted to create a sense of urgency and immediate call to action, and the one-week time frame allows us to do exactly that,” he said.

The campaign comes at a time during the year when there is not a heavy emphasis on fundraising.

“In creating the campaign, we’ve been able to generate a lot of excitement and help organizations and individuals be more actively involved during a period when they might not have been in previous of years,” Smith said. “Creating the ‘One Day We Will Dance In Celebration’ campaign and scheduling it so it culminates on 100 Days on Nov. 8 is our attempt at building up the 100 Days celebration.”

THON weekend takes place Feb. 16-18, 2018.

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Adriana Lacy is a senior Public Relations and African American Studies major from the oh-so-famous town of "Right outside of Philly," Pennsylvania. She's the editor in chief of The Underground, and thinks that she's pretty awesome. When she's not tweeting (@adriana_lacy), Adriana enjoys actually living right outside of Philly, writing about sports, social justice, and drinking urban-framed, artisan crafted coffee. You can email her at eic@psuunderground.com